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Republican senators are likely to tweak the tax credits in their
health care bill now that a vote on the measure won’t take place until after the Fourth of July recess,
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.)
said.

A floor vote hadn’t yet been scheduled when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) announced the delay during party conferences on June 27. Senators said they
hope to figure out what could pass before leaving for the week-long break. Republican
senators applauded the move, saying it gives them more time to settle differences
on trouble spots such as Medicaid funding and coverage losses predicted in a June
26 Congressional Budget Office score.

“It affects a lot of people in a real way,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said. “I think
that some of the issues that people have raised, that are heartfelt issues to their
own families, we exacerbate by the way the bill is now constructed.”

Pushing back the vote also gives Republican leadership more time to sway holdouts,
such as Sens. Susan Collins
(R-Maine) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.). Changes to the size of tax credits and the rollback
of Medicaid in the bill could also be made without alienating conservative members
who want to see market reforms, said Thune, the third-ranking Senate Republican.

Republicans can lose two votes and pass the measure, the Better Care Reconciliation
Act, which is an overhaul of the Affordable Care Act. No Democrats are expected to
support it.

Room for Change

The Senate bill would produce $202 billion more in net savings than the House-passed
bill (
H.R. 1628) and would result in 22 million more people losing insurance over a decade, the
CBO said.

“We’ve got some headroom fiscally we can work within on both the tax credits and the
Medicaid provisions,”
Thune said. “I would hope by the end of the week we have reached basically a conclusion
with regard to the substance and the policy of this. Then it’s just a function of
figuring out the timing.”

The Senate bill creates a system of tax credits that are adjusted based on age, income,
and geography. The credits are capped at 350 percent of the federal poverty level
instead of at 400 percent under current law. Credits in the House bill were only adjusted
for age and capped at certain income levels.

A floor vote could be held soon after lawmakers return the week of July 10. Several
senators threatened June 26 to vote against the procedural step needed to bring the
measure to the floor, a signal of the deep disagreement over the bill as is.

“The politics of this doesn’t get any easier the longer you wait,” Thune said.

Thomas A. Barthold, chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation, was seen exiting
the Senate lunchroom June 27. Corker said he asked that the CBO’s scorekeepers attend
the party lunches June 27 to answer technical questions.

Republican senators are expected to meet with President Donald Trump at the White
House June 27. Vice President Mike Pence and White House press secretary Sean Spicer
were also in the Capitol meeting with senators. Pence played a key negotiating role
in the lead-up to the House’s May 4 vote.

On the Horizon

Passing a health bill would allow lawmakers to turn to their next policy priority:
overhauling the tax code. Optimism about Republicans’ ability to pass tax reform legislation
has waned in recent weeks as the House, Senate, and White House have failed to agree
on a tax reform framework and the health care bill faced a series of delays as it
moved through the legislative process.

“The more you do on health care, the more options you have on tax reform,” Rubio said.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the point-person on
tax reform in that chamber, previously said the Senate’s progress on health care was
encouraging, but that it wouldn’t be a deal breaker if the vote took place after the
July 4 recess.

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